Fire lookout · Becker County, Minnesota
Egg Lake
Becker County Fire Tower 58, a CCC-built 81-foot Aermotor ladder tower from 1935 in the northern Tamarac refuge; FFLA marks it gone with no removal date.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. The FFLA list marks it Tower Gone with no date; the county list uses the past tense and gives no removal date
Visit & stay
Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.
Access
Open to the public. Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge is open to visitors and its visitor center is open seasonally; no source says whether the tower site is marked or reachable
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- The county list also mentions a trail to the site and describes the walk as pleasant, especially in the fall; the list is undated
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower81-foot Aermotor ladder towerThe design: Aermotor
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1935
- Height
- 81 ft (24.7 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Minnesota Forest Service, now the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Becker County, Minnesota
- Coordinates
- 47.02424, −95.63100
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mn-egg-lake
View from the cab
What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.
This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and its recorded height.
Downloads about 3.7 MB of terrain data the first time.
Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.
History
Then and now
- 1935 BuiltErected by the Civilian Conservation Corps as an 81-foot Aermotor ladder tower, under the Park Rapids forestry stationSource: upload.wikimedia.org
- 1938 EventTamarac National Wildlife Refuge established by Executive Order 7902, dated May 31, 1938Source: fws.gov
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.
Old maps of this spot
USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Egg Lake, listed in the county records as Fire Tower 58, sat in the north end of the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge in Becker County.1 The Civilian Conservation Corps erected it in 1935 as an 81-foot Aermotor ladder tower.1 The list places it under the Park Rapids forestry station, with the Minnesota Forest Service as owner.1 The refuge came later. The Fish and Wildlife Service says it was established by Executive Order 7902, dated May 31, 1938, about three years after the tower went up.2
The Forest Fire Lookout Association marks Egg Lake as gone, with no date.3 The county list describes the tower in the past tense, and no source we read gives a date for its removal.1
The county list also mentions a trail to the site and describes the walk as pleasant, especially in the fall.1 The refuge's visitor center is open seasonally.2 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the tower site now, or whether it is marked for visitors.
- Becker County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers, Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Becker_County_Fire_Lookout_Towers.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/refuge/tamarac (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Minnesota Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mn/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, visiting details, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story
More about this lookout elsewhere
- Becker County Minnesota Fire Lookout Towers (Wikimedia Commons) (opens another site)
- Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) (opens another site)
- FFLA Minnesota lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.